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religion and reason as natural phenomena
Browsing All Posts filed under »atheism«
Geertz on atheism
The question of whether religion is natural has been discussed in many journal articles and pubs. This is particularly the case since the appearance of New Atheism as a social movement. What has been lacking is an article that brings the various strands of discussion together and explains in what sense atheism and/or religion can […]
Atheists know most about religion
September 28, 2010
An interesting result in a Pew poll that’s just come out concerning knowledge of religion among US residents. The atheists and agnostics came out on top in terms of knowledge of Christianity and other world religions. They managed to beat out everyone from Evangelicals to Catholics, with only the Jews and Mormons coming a coles […]
Beyond Disbelief: preliminary report
September 24, 2010
Not long ago I placed on this blog information about a web survey of nonbelievers that was carried out by a couple of academics from the University of Waterloo. The results are now in and Cheyne and Britton have produced a preliminary report that makes for interesting reading. I quote just the final paragraph as […]
Abstract for ISORECEA
July 9, 2010
My Czech colleague, Ales Chalupa, who organised the very valuable meeting on cognitive science of religion I attended last year is co-organising another, much bigger meeting this year. The International Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Association conference will take place in December of this year and is to have a section devoted […]
Scientific presuppositions and the supernatural
June 24, 2010
In the discussion of my interview (linked to in the previous post) one of the readers suggests that I think science must presuppose naturalism on, what I gather is being suggested, something like faith. This is, of course, nonsense but it is very popular nonsense and is based upon a couple of misconceptions concerning science […]
Common Sense Atheism interview
May 13, 2010
Luke Muehlhauser runs a podcast series of interviews with various philosophers and scientists that focuses on issues connected to atheism – one of his previous guest was Graham Oppy, who is an Australian atheist philosopher of religion and, as it happens, the guy who helped John Bigelow supervise my doctorate. The discussions tend to be […]
Naturalist accounts of religion and evidence for God’s existence
September 22, 2009
Another issue that was raised during question time after my Bristol talk was that of the evidence for the existence of God. One of my main points is that religions try to protect their claims against counterevidence, making it also unlikely that any evidence for such claims can be obtained in their normal social context. […]
Atheism as the out-group
September 3, 2009
On the Epiphenom blog, Tom Rees has an interesting discussion of a study concerning the way atheists are distrusted in the US. He ties it to a claim I made a little while ago about religion being used as a marker of the in-group/out-group distinction. He thinks the evidence in the study points against it […]
Article on DS Wilson in The Skeptic
July 16, 2009
My article on David Sloan Wilson’s position regarding the New Atheists has been published and is in the current issue of The Skeptic. As I think I mentioned previously, the title of it has been changed with my original title now being given as the sub-title. I well understand why that was done (which is […]
Fixation in Teorema
June 12, 2009
The long version of “Fixation of superstitious beliefs” should be coming out in Teorema relatively soon. It develops the ideas contained in the short version that I put on this blog a while ago. I’m linking to a draft version of the long article in pdf format: My aim in this paper is to sketch […]
Just Another Deisidaimon 
November 20, 2010
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